


eat my whole flesh away

by foxxwrites



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Heartache, Hurt/Comfort, after the hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 20:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16183097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxxwrites/pseuds/foxxwrites
Summary: bethyl: when daryl hears the cruel echo of bullet leaving gun, he feels nothing at all. then he feels everything.





	eat my whole flesh away

 

** innocent, naive bird, **

 

 

 

 

She's bruised and bloody, and _oh_ , so beautiful all the same.

The light in her eyes, the gleaming mirth of determination and bravery. She radiated pure courage.

She was angry, she was disappointed, she was no longer the innocent, little bird she used to be.

Killing dead people still makes you a murderer.

He recognizes her when he sees her across the hall, behind the wheelchair.

He recognizes her and he knows something within her has changed but he still feels the same tangled mess of feelings she erupts within him.

She made him feel like he could be something, be some _one_.

He argued with her that it was a random act of chance that they ended up surviving this long, that they ended up in the middle of the woods together.

She argued with him that it was a determined act of fate that they ended up surviving this long, that they ended up in the middle of the woods together.

When he sees the crescent moon shine in her eyes and the sun glow atop her head, he feels relief.

When he sees her turn, he feels dread.

But when Daryl hears the cruel echo of bullet leaving gun, he feels nothing at all.

Then he feels everything.

 

 

 

"Where do you think we go when we die?" She had asked him.

"Nowhere," he sunk his teeth into the soft meat of a rat they had found.

"Daryl," she chided him, "Don't say that."

"Go and find out then," he deadpanned, "Second time lucky."

He doesn't feel guilty for anything he had said to her, because everything he said, she understood why he said it. That's what made her special.

She challenged his pessimism and that made her own hope stronger. His constant negativity made her more and more determined to convince him, and herself, that there is a happy ever after.

He made her feel needed.

He gave her his bandanna to be a safe blanket around some measly berries, "For the others," she tried to convince herself.

If he had escaped the prison alone, if she had, would they have had the same hope? Would they have lasted?

Daryl hated the loneliness that settled within him when Beth was taken. He hated it because he had only just stopped feeling it.

 

 

 

She had told him, "I hate goodbyes."

He had answered, "Me too."

Yet here he is, pulling the trigger, and wishing she had said something to him. _Anything_.

Something smiley, something sweet.

_"Did you miss me, Daryl?"_

_"Told ya I could make it without you."_

He would say, "Shut up," but it would mean, "Yes, I know. Yes, _I did_."

He hates goodbyes because they're an ending, but now, there was still an ending. A wordless, hollow ending.

He doesn't know what to do with it.

Would she be glad she didn't say goodbye?

 

 

 

 

** please come home **

 

 

 

 

He wonders if she would mourn him. If she would cry.

He remembers the feel of her hand in his. The graveyard was so pretty through his eyes that day.

He remembers the feel of her limp body in his arms. He would never be able to look at a hospital the same way ever again.

She looks so peaceful, eyes closed, lips parted. A perfect sight, the only blemish being the petite bullet hole smack in the middle of her forehead.

"Do you think I'll ever see the sea again," he had heard her ponder from behind him as they trekked about the wood.

"It's just, it was so free, so magical. You could float and feel the sun on your face," she hummed, content at the thought.

"You'd be lucky to see a puddle of water," he had grunted at her.

"Did you ever swim, Daryl?"

"What kind of a question is that?"

"I just don't think anyone ever took you to the beach, is all."

"Yeah, whatever."

At the time he was annoyed at her prattling on. It's a real kick to the teeth to now be longing for pointless small talk about oceans.

He longs. It's new. It's a pit in the center of his stomach that hurts every time he hears someone laugh.

He held her hand once. Now he holds her knife close to him at night.

 

 

 

The last thing he had said to her was "I'll meet you there."

He ran for two days after the hearse that took her. As he ran, all he could hear was her voice asking him if he was okay.

She asked him if he's okay, she asked the bulky, scary warrior if he was okay. The tiny girl mourning her father asked him if he's okay.

That's who Beth Greene was.

He ran for two days to find her.

That's who Daryl Dixon is.

It wasn't so long ago he was the one lying in a coffin, listening to her sing. Oh, how the tables have turned.

She was a songbird, loud and free. He was a hawk with a clipped wing.

 

 

 

He hears a tormenting mix of Maggie's screams and Beth's laughter every night.

And, of course;

_"You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon."_

It's no easier in the daylight.

He holds his crossbow and remembers how damn big it looked in her lithe, little arms.

He remembers those arms wrapped around him. Beauty was never afraid to hug the Beast and that's how a heart softens.

 

 

 

** oh, great crow, i have only one request to you. **

 

 

 

He would have stayed in that little house with the little dog, with little Beth.

He would have been fine with that, happy, maybe, someday.

He would have liked to find out, anyway.

"I told you to stay back," he had chided her, entirely unsurprised.

"Yeah, but, Daryl, you said there was a dog."

She enamored him with her excitement. She smiled at new shirts, and half-dead dogs, and peanut butter.

So he goes to find that stupid one-eyed dog. Even just to bury it beside her.

 

 

"That's your problem," she had said as they wrapped themselves around the campfire, "Because you're so surly no one ever told you to grow up."

"Yeah, well, because you're cute no one ever told you to shut up," he had angrily muttered, hoping she didn't read into his words.

"You do, all the time."

"Yeah, I'm making up for lost years."

"I wasn't always sheltered, you know," she had nodded her head in such a determined gesture, her eyebrows furrowed pointedly.

"Could've fooled me."

"I wasn't! I had a normal life before the dead started walking. Sure I never dyed my hair, never snuck out, never drank or did drugs, but I lived. I loved and I made mistakes, just like everybody else. You think I'm young and I can't know anything but you're _wrong_ , Daryl Dixon. I know that you're sad, and afraid to be alone."

"That's enough."

"No, it's not. You pretend you don't care but you're the one that cares the most. So grow up. Be a man and show your feelings instead of just bottling them up."

 

 

 

She was the one who made Daryl Dixon feel safe, to talk about his feelings, to lay panting in the grass, to eat peanut butter with.

He's not sure he's felt the same since the hospital.

He feels like he's drowning, like she's constantly pulling him under water.

When she smiled he drowned in her light. Now when he pictures that smile, he drowns in his surroundings. They blur, twist, melt away.

It all seems surreal, like his vision has been replaced by water. Thick, salty water.

He's not mad at her for trying to kill Dawn. He's mad at her for dying in front of him. He's mad at her for dying.

Beth died saving someone.

But she still died.

 

 

 

 

** eat my whole flesh away. **

 

 

 

 

"Don't matter, she's dead," he had looked upon the dead body, the 'rich bitch' sign hanging from it, just another walker.

"It does matter," she would not let someone be degraded, even in death.

A stranger mattered to her. Kindness mattered to her. Everything mattered to her.

He gets it now — _"I get it now."_ — because he would lay guard over her body if he thought anyone would touch it.

He thought he mightn't feel so guilty because she didn't die in his care. Except, she did.

She was always in his care.

 

 

 

He dreams they're running.

He dreams they're still running together, unsure of the future but certain of the present.

He dreams she's alive and that's what allows him to sleep at night.

She's a welcome ghost. She can haunt him for eternity.

He's afraid, if she doesn't, he'll forget her smile and her soft blue eyes, her tiny fingers and how her face was always worried, like a mirror to his own.

She was all teeth and no bite. But she was so tough. Tougher than she knew.

 

 

 

"You don't like much," she had hummed into his ear softly, mid-piggyback.

"No," was his simple answer

"I don't know if that means you're a simple man or a picky one."

"I wouldn't think too much about it."

"That's why we're different. I think too much about everything, you don't think about much at all."

"Why do you say that?"

"Your eyes are on the future and I'm still trying to figure out the past."

"Figure out what?"

"Sometimes, Daryl, I just think if I try really hard I'll find a way to explain everything bad that's ever happened."

"Well, if you find it, let me know."

 

 

 

 

** but please do not eat my eyes, **

 

 

 

 

"I know you lost something back there," Rick says to him.

It was something. An untitled chapter. A freak storm on a sunny day.

That something ruined him. He knew he would get better, but he can't help thinking that he'd get better a lot faster if she were here. Irony.

He wonders if she was too good for this world.

He wonders why he had to be affected by her right before she was taken away.

He wonders why, even in the apocalypse, he didn't just say, "Beth, you're right, I don't like much, but I like you."

He wonders why he was so stupid.

He wonders if she'd miss him as much as he misses her.

 

 

 

"She saved your life, too, right?" Carol smiles sadly.

He didn't save hers.

She had felt like life, she radiated this wholeness. She made him feel so full.

Now he feels nothing, except sorry.

He's just so _sorry_.

"Do you think this is how the dinosaurs felt?" she had asked as she lay staring up at the night sky.

"You're drunk," he had chuckled.

"Thank you for taking care of me, Daryl," she had turned to smile at him, "You didn't have to."

"'Course I did. We're—" he had paused, uncertain and embarrassed.

"What?"

"Uh, nothing."

"Daryl, what were you gonna say?"

A star flickered in the sky, the grass moved under the wind's cruel hands, and he let out a held breath.

"Family."

Looking at her smile was the first time Daryl Dixon ever found himself breathless.

 

 

 

She said he'd be the last man standing. He's scared she's right.

He keeps fighting yet every day he questions why.

Some days he doesn't try very hard at all. But then he remembers that she would want him to live. She would want him to take care of her sister. To keep an eye on them all.

She was selfless, and he'll be damned if he won't honour her memory.

_Beth Greene, if I am the last man standing I promise I won't ever forget you._

Well, the last man, and his one-eyed dog named Fate.

 

 

 

 

** please do not eat my eyes, because i wish to see my beloved again **   
  


 

 

 


End file.
